The concept of “service” has been turned into a collectivist “package-deal” by
means of a crude equivocation and a cruder evasion. In the language of
economics, the word “service” means work offered for trade on a free market,
to be paid for by those who choose to buy it. In a free society, men deal with
one another by voluntary, uncoerced exchange, by mutual consent to mutual
profit, each man pursuing his own rational self-interest, none sacrificing
himself or others; and all values—whether goods or services—are traded, not
given away.
This is the opposite of what the word “service” means in the language of
altruist ethics: to an altruist, “service” means unrewarded, self-sacrificial,
unilateral giving, while receiving nothing in return. It is this sort of
selfless “service” to “society” that collectivists demand of all men.